Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) is one of four protagonists who break out into sudden acts of shocking violence in Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN
A TOUCH OF SIN (TIAN ZHU DING) (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, December 7, 7:00
Series continues through January 16
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
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During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his latest film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and now wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes this year, A Touch of Sin is screening December 7 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of exemplary films that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continuing with such works as Spike Jonze’s Her, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and J. C. Chandor’s All Is Lost.
Buster Keaton’s Civil War-set The General was a box-office failure upon its release in 1926-27, but it is now deservedly recognized as a silent-film classic. Based on William Pittenger’s memoir, The Great Locomotive Chase, the film stars Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a Georgia train man who is rejected by the Confederate army when he tries to enlist to impress his fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). Little does he know that he was turned away because the Confederacy believes he will be more valuable to them as a civilian engineer; meanwhile, Annabelle and her family think he’s a coward, not believing he even tried to sign up to fight in the first place. But when Union spies led by Captain Anderson (Glen Cavender) steal his beloved train, affectionately known as the General — and capture Annabelle in the process — Johnnie steams into action, doing whatever it takes to get his two loves back while also trying the save the South from a sneak attack. Directed by the Great Stone Face with regular collaborator Clyde Bruckman, The General is a thrilling ride chock-full of dangerous stunts that Keaton performed himself, often involving the moving Western & Electric Railroad train. Keaton manages to make the South sympathetic, depicting the North as evil and conniving, while avoiding any political aspects of the war. And in another sly turn, he casts his father, Joe, who appeared in more than a dozen of his films, as a Union general. The riotous romp was entered into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in its inaugural year, 1989, alongside such other classics as The Best Years of Our Lives, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, High Noon, Modern Times, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, On the Waterfront, Singin’ in the Rain, The Searchers, Sunrise, The Wizard of Oz, and others, which is high praise indeed. The General is screening on December 7 at 5:30 at Anthology Film Archives; at 3:30, Anthology will be showing four of Keaton’s shorts, One Week, Neighbors, The Scarecrow, and The Play House.
Jaws and Friday the 13th meet Lifeboat and Lord of the Flies in indie filmmaker Larry Fessenden’s latest thriller, Beneath. Made for Syfy’s Chiller TV channel, Beneath is the first feature film Fessenden (
Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien pays tribute to master filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu’s centenary with Café Lumiere, a beautifully lyrical yet elegantly simple drama about a young woman making her way through life. Pop star Yo Hitoto stars as Yoko, a woman who spends much of her time riding trains and trolleys to visit bookstore owner Hajime (the always excellent Tadanobu Asano) and to find out more about Chinese composer Jiang Wenye. She also returns home to her stepmother (Kimiko Yo) and father (Nenji Kobayashi); the latter doesn’t react when he finds out that Yoko is pregnant and does not intend to marry her boyfriend. In fact, there are barely any emotional reactions at all, although there are plenty of trains taking the characters where they seemingly want to be. Cinematographer Lee Pingping shot Café Lumiere on location with natural sound and lighting; his camera often lingers statically on a scene as the characters walk in and out of the carefully composed frame and are heard off-screen, in long takes, furthering the illusion of reality — mimicking the truth Ozu strove for in his work. In essence, the film has no beginning, no middle, and no end; it is 104 dazzling minutes in the life of a fascinating woman and her friends and relatives. Café Lumiere is screening December 4 at 4:30 and December 6 at 7:30 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center festival “Ozu and His Afterlives,” which honors the 110th anniversary of the master filmmaker’s birth and the 50th anniversary of his death; he died on his birthday at the age of sixty in 1963. The series features Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon and Equinox Flower in addition to seven works that were either directly or indirectly inspired by Ozu and his unique style, including Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, Aki Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl, Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum, Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room, and Wim Wenders’s Tokyo-Ga.